Database of fictional characters?

Question

Is there a database of fictional characters from novels, films, dramas etc., grouped by genre?

The most important entries for me are the name, nationality (real or fictional), title of the novel/film/drama and the genre.

Answer 1

Wikidata contains 158752 fictional characters, you can get them using this query:

SELECT ?item ?itemLabel WHERE {
  # Item's type is: fictional character, or sub-type, or sub-sub-type, etc
  ?item p:P31/ps:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q95074.  
  SERVICE wikibase:label {
    bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en" .
  }
}

Just run it by clicking here and download as CSV, TSV or JSON.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q95074 is the "fictional character" item.

You can get more properties about each by adding OPTIONAL lines (and corresponding label in the first line), like this:

SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?presentInWorkLabel ?countryOfCitizenshipLabel ?image WHERE {
  # Item's type is: fictional character, or sub-type, or sub-sub-type, etc.
  ?item p:P31/ps:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q95074.
  OPTIONAL{?item wdt:P18 ?image}
  OPTIONAL{?item wdt:P27 ?countryOfCitizenship}
  OPTIONAL{?item wdt:P1441 ?presentInWork}
  SERVICE wikibase:label {
    bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en". # You can specify more languages.
  }
}

The problem is that the query times out easily, so you might have to run it several times with different properties then match the QID identifiers.

Excerpt from the output:

Please note that the same fictional character can appear in different works, which can be of different genres.

To get genres, you could use OPTIONAL{?item wdt:P1441 ?work. OPTIONAL{?work wdt:P136 ?genre}} but timeouts will become difficult to avoid so you will have to limit your query.

Try it to get a result like this:

To reliably get all properties of all fictional characters, I believe (I would love to be proved wrong, if you know another way please comment) that your only option is to write a script that performs many smaller SPARQL requests, similar to this script that gets a dozen properties for all embassies and consulates of the world, please be aware that adapting this script will take a few hours (or a few days if you are new to development) and running it without overloading the server will take days.

License: public domain

Answer 2

A past alternative to using DBpedia as suggested by Nicolas Raoul was Freebase before it was shut down.

Answer 3

A bit unusual, but might I suggest Villains Wiki and Heroes Wiki?

You would need to learn how to use the Wikia API though.